Contract Number: IST-2001-35283

Project Acronym: PoLoS

Project Name: Platform for Location-Based Services

Key Action, Action line:Key Action IV, Action Line IV.3.2.

Project Manager: Professor Lazaros Merakos
University of Athens,

Department of Informatics and Telecommunications,

Panepistimioupolis, Ilisia,

Athens 15784, Greece

Email: merakos@di.uoa.gr

Tel: +30210 – 7275323

Fax: +30210 – 7275601

List of participants

*          C = Co-ordinator

            P = Principal contractor

            A = Assistant Contractor

Objective

POLOS provides the design and the implementation of an Integrated Platform for Location-Based Services (LBS). It cover the full range of related issues such as Service Creation, Service Deployment and Provision.

Such platform will be customisable to a wide spectrum of business domains. This capability will be demonstrated through the specialisation of the derived generic infrastructure in a domain such as automotive assistance. The domain specific service will be developed through the Service Creation Environment and run through the Service Deployment environment. Lastly, the project will adapt process models and process re-engineering methods from the business sector to propose a process structure for organisations specialising solely on the provision of LBS.

Figure 1—POLOS

Important characteristics of the pursued architecture are:

  ·         re-usability

  ·         independence (from networking platforms, positioning techniques, GIS systems and terminal technologies, e.g., GSM handset, PDAs).

The architecture will be applicable in GSM/GPRS/UMTS networks but also in small-scale infrastructures like WLANs. To accomplish the above-mentioned objectives the project will capitalise on technologies such as Open Service Architecture (OSA), MExE (Mobile Execution Environment) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The figure shown above provides a graphical illustration of the targeted system.

Innovation

The required ubiquitous support for applications of interest involves the synergy of different technologies and architectures. For the efficient cooperation the PoLoS framework will develop a variety of interfaces for communication with terminal devices (HTTP/IP, WAP, SMS, CORBA/IP and MExE), GIS components (textual and graphical data retrieval) and network infrastructure (OSA). The expected innovations of the PoLoS platform are its re-usability and independence from the employed network infrastructure, positioning techniques and mobile devices capabilities. The integral intelligence of the PoLoS kernel and the capability negotiation introduced will facilitate the flexile and efficient provision of LBS by decoupling the characteristics of the terminal device and its location from the application and the end user. To support the platform independence, the same application no matter which interface is employed (terminal type, CPU, operating system, communications link) is available, in the optimum way.

POLOS will cater for several models of operation that can be considered for location-based services:  

       Server Push (SP). The mobile user has pre-registered (or dynamically registered) to the LBS, authorizing the network to frequently trace his position and push location dependent information to his terminal (e.g., using SMS or WAP PUSH) on pre-arranged time intervals.

      Client Pull (CP) Model:

°         Traced Terminal Initiated Request (TTIR). The user issues a specific request towards the network passing location information to the appropriate server-side components. Delivered content is adjusted to the present position of the user.

°         External Terminal Initiated Request (XTIR). The traced terminal passes its present coordinates to the network or the network determines them. Such information is subsequently fed to properly structured databases by the service provider and delivered to external users upon their request (e.g., through the Web).

Results

At the end of this project the following will have been developed and demonstrated:

•  a new platform that allows the deployment and provision of LBS over different network infrastructures.

•  A service creation environment and a service specification language that allows easy service creation and deployment.

• Prototypical service deployment and provision using the developed platform over an  existing operator’s laboratory infrastructure.  

• A generic process model allowing service providers to fully realize the potential of the developed platform.

The impact of these achievements is multi-faced:

• PoLoS will increase the network agility and functionality, and support service interworking and management, focusing on active and dynamically reconfigurable network technologies, methods and tools.  

•  PoLoS focuses on the study of novel concepts and architectures for networks offering significant advances in terms of performance, cost and service capabilities.

•  PoLoS develops and validates open architectures, technologies and tools to allow for the provision of a variety of applications as networked services over a commonly available infrastructure.

•  PoLoS enables experimentation with new business models to exploit to the widest possible extent the novelties incorporated in the underlying technology platform.
•  PoLoS will increase the awareness of people with respect to advanced mobile network services and the potentials of Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
• PoLoS defines an open access method that allows user appliances and Internet applications to access location information from the wireless networks, irrespective of their underlying air interface technologies and positioning methods.